22/1/13

The hill is steep and I’m tired, it’s late and all I want is to go home, to watch TV, to eat from the fridge and sleep till twelve the next day. It stands there like a dark green menace, smug and waiting for my clambering feet to climb it and then give up, for it to win... Well, she’s already half way up now and I’m at the bottom alone and cold cause it is nearly February. Does she not know that? She runs around all the time with her skirt flapping and no coat or scarf or gloves and hat on, as if she’s invincible. Or smug, smug like the hill I can’t climb. Smug cause I can’t climb a hill and I get cold. Well, I’ll show them both...

She’s at the top and calling down to me “Jack! Jack! Hurry, its b-e-a-utiful! Oh, I’ve never seen stars like these from up here, I could just grab one and put in my pocket!” What a child... She doesn't read either, not that I really do, sometimes I just pretend and show off in English cause i’m the only one bothered to read Wikipedia as if my life depended on it... Sometimes I don’t know why she’s my friend, Mother says I’m above her. That she’s a distraction, that all she wants to do is get smashed and kiss boys and in the morning gorge her little fat face out and say she’s going to learn how to cook and camp properly, like the experts on TV. I should study, she says, study hard and read more, more more more, that’s the key.

“Jill, well, that girl is raised as if she were a wolf. Wild and rabid and eating raw meat if she could! Ha! I bet she’s never even left the country.” Sometimes I don’t want to leave the country, but I do anyways.

It’s muddy and I slip and get dirt all over my clean and ironed shirt, so I call out that I’m taking a rest, so I do. I look out over the country and the town. I can make out landmarks, the church, the library, the schools and resource centres. I think I can see my house but i’m not sure, it might be a bit hidden behind the school. I can make out Jill’s house, out there alone in the country with its farm. That’s another reason Mother doesn’t like Jill, her family are farmers. My family are all important people she tells me. So important that they don’t have time to meet the farmers, too busy... I’ve met the farmers, they’re perfectly nice, charming and warm and they chuckle, all of them, deep and throaty chuckles, the best type of chuckling... That was when I was little and since then I’ve always reminded myself to chuckle, not giggle like my parents. They hate chuckles, say chuckles take too long, “a quick giggle is all that can be condoned.”

I get up and start again up the hill, slipping and cursing loudly into the darkness. Three-quarters of the way up. I can hear Jill shouting out and tracing star patterns with her fingers. Do I have homework for tomorrow? It’ll be too late by the time I get home anyways.

I get there and there she is, lying in mud, her skirt pulled up high and her eyes wide looking up at the stars, so I lie down next to her and look up, and...well, she was right, these are the best stars I’ve ever seen. So many that I’ve seen before and all of these new ones, scattered across like jacks. Christ, why does she always have to be right? She doesn’t deserve it...

31/10/12

“Each one of us has a designed and set place and purpose in the universe and it is up to us to decide whether we accept this as undisputed fact, or rebel against and decide our own duty, our ultimate our personal duty.” I sat speechless staring at him, loving him and watching his lips move to form each marvellous and angelic syllable. He smirked that little wild smirk that every person has down inside of themselves and said “Ah, shit man, don’t be leaving me hangin’, c’mon, what d’ya say about that?” “It’s brilliant” I said and I knew that I loved him and I knew that he could also love me and he knew that too and we loved each other momentarily. So we stayed up all night staring at each other on his bed with our backs up straight and hands folded on our laps and breathed deep and slow and talked about everything and everyone, childhood, lovers, the people I loved and admired like my Grandfather and for him that one teacher and all the music I love and films and books and writers, and he did the same and he confessed (when I asked) that he’d never really read until he had had me and realised all the wonders reading could do to a man and his soul. I really was touched and he said that on the day we met he went straight to a bookstore and bought a copy of Ulysses and The Sea-Wolf. “Gawd, I read one page of Ulysses and went back and exchanged it for the first book I saw East of Eden.” I told him that both of these books had been favourites of mine when I was a kid and still were. “How did you like them?” “Well, I read them cover to cover to cover no problamo and I did not care for them, not one little bit.” “But the Timshel in Steinbeck and the Nietzsche in London are perfect for you! You went on about them near enough just then!” “I know I know and I appreciate their help to the depths of my soul I do, but they were just straight reads. I didn’t need to reread anything. I need a challenge, to be stimulated, ya know?” I told him to try Ulysses again – “Not that stimulated!” So I gave him my copy of Naked Lunch and The Wasteland, he thanked me and I kissed him on the cheek and wished him good morning and left him and went for the door quick. 

11/12/12

The chalet was up high in the Alps and was the highest in the village. We had a small flat there for the week and the view was glorious as a great expanse of empty space and forest and snow and river and mountain rose up high above you and swallowed up the sky. There are moments when you look at something grand and tall and broad and it doesn't look real to you, it’s far too big to comprehend, me at least. The church down the road from my house at home doesn't look real some days. The Shard in London when I saw it, the Duomo in Florence, I expect the Empire State Building, and these mountains. Blue and cavernous and cold. I've seen many mountains, the French Alps, the Italian Alps, Scotland, but the Austrian Alps were the only ones that kept their sense of enormous proportion and power for long enough to really understand it. The flat had a wooden balcony that looked down the valley and up at the mountains with their sharp peaks, and when it rained it was cool and sheltered  and you felt that the thunder and lightning bolts were far away and nothing could touch you because you were protected by a wall of mountains. I felt sorry for the people stuck in the cable cars when lightning struck as they would stop and bounce and sway in the wind and even watching them gave me the fear of God. The landlady would say that “You have to experience the cable cars when they stop! It comes with the price of living here! Fun!” The only time we sampled the cable cars they stopped during our descent and myself and my brother were alone in car with an Austrian family who laughed and screamed with joy and pointed, but I sat there with my eyes closed and looked down to the ground fifty feet below and prayed silently. When we got to the bottom I looked back up the cable car lines at the mountain and thought about how long it would take to climb to the top from the dead bottom, and how long it taken for the mountain to get that high, and whether it was really there because it didn't look it and the locals acted as if it were no different to anything else in the world and I appreciated the mountain. It may have been one of the oldest things in the world, but nobody appreciated that it was. It had seen wars and wars and deforestation and death and simply looked down with omniscience and content and grew ever taller and more unreal. It had been there before I was born and would be there after I had died and it was safe and separate and it would still grow even taller and look down on everything below it, and that made me feel safe and I understood the mountain from within and appreciated it.